I think I have blogger's block. Normally, I've got about a million ideas swimming through my head with roughly 95% of them earmarked for Blog Posts I Would Have Time to Write if I Hired a Nanny and by the time I sit down at night to get the ideas on the screen, I have to decide which idea gets to be born into words and off I am on my merry way.
Lately, however, I've been struggling. Maybe it's lack of motivation. Maybe it's stress. Or maybe I most likely need to borrow some of HC Palmquist's Ambien or Robin O'Bryant's pet Leroy and see where those avenues take me for inspiration. I had originally been thinking of buying a huge metal chicken named Beyonce to be my muse, but looks like that's already been done. So instead I've been finding myself staring at an empty square on my screen waiting to hold my words while Add New Post kinda just stand there, mocking me.

A new post about what? Maybe it's just me, but I sometimes wonder if I need to filter my moods when deciding what to post. When it comes to blog hits, funny works. Introspective? Not so much. But that leads me to question why I am blogging anymore if my only desire is to see an upward trend in readership because if 'm not writing for myself first than who am I writing for?

I'm not going to take some bullshit high-road and tell you that I've reached nirvana and no longer care what you or anyone else thinks and will be happy to just share my words on a public forum that no one other than myself makes time to read. I'm not going to tell you that being authentic is more important than being popular, mainly because, even through I agree with the sentiment, the blatant overuse of the word when it comes to blogging makes me want to pull my hair out. And I'm certainly not going to tell you that while your writing needs to be for you before it's for anyone else, you had better damned well be thinking about your audience and your numbers and your popularity and your ability to network with other writers/bloggers/social media innovators to get your name out there for the sake of that Godforsaken platform because we're happy your authentic blog that you write for religiously and maintain just for you because the mere act of sharing your words even if no one else is reading them is cathartic in and of itself but really? Who told you all that shit didn't matter?

It's all very chicken and egg-like. It doesn't matter if our dream is to connect with others in the same place in life (shout out to all the Mommy Bloggers and a big WHAT UP to the Writer Mama's out there!), or if we are trying to keep our heads above water in an ever-rising sea of expectations regarding what we need to have accomplished to be deemed worthy of a book deal (Bump-its come to mind), or if we just want to prove to ourselves that after wrangling the kids all day and looking for that nerve you are pretty sure you just had, we can still string together a sentence for other adults that don't include the words "potty, nigh' night, or Dammit, how many times do I have to tell you not to flash strangers your Hello Kitty panties to strangers in the middle of Target?" A dream is a dream is a dream. It's just up to us to sift through the bullshit on the way, kick any and all irrelevant emotional baggage to the curb (being careful to store away the relevant emotional baggage for later use in the appropriate essays, articles, books, and or blog posts), and decide each and every time we sit down to send our words out into the universe what drew us to do so.

For me? This blog is my personal space which I publicly share. Sometimes I'm snarky, funny, offensive. Others I am introspective, reflective, and revealing. You might not like or appreciate the snark or maybe introspective isn't your thing. And that's okay. I'm not writing for you. I'm writing for me. And if something I say just happens to connect with someone who just happened to stop by on a particular day, that will be enough for me. I wore a mood ring as a child to let the world know without speaking the color of the thoughts I carried within my head. Now, there's an app for that.

So which came first, y'all?

The chicken or the egg? The inspiration to share or the inspiration to influence?